How Not To Woo Women Voters

Former Arkansas Gov. and 2008 Presidential contender Mike Huckabee (R) gave a speech at the Republican National Committee's winter meeting in downtown Washington. In it, he addressed the pernicious myth that women’s rights are under attack buy the GOP. He insisted nothing could be father from the truth, “Our party stands for the recognition of the equality of women and the capacity of women … Women I know are smart, educated, intelligent, capable of doing anything that anybody else can do.”

Alrighty, so far so good.

If only Huckabee had stopped there. Sadly, he goes on to speak more about these women which he knows. “Women I know are outraged that Democrats think that women are nothing more than helpless and hopeless creatures whose only goal in life is to have the government provide for them birth control medication … That's not a war on them. It's a war for them. And if the Democrats want to insult the women of America by making them believe that they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control, because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of the government, then so be it."

“Huckabee said by e-mail: “Women (like men) are sexual beings, but they are much more than that. To reduce either gender or any person to one aspect of their being is an unfair characterization. My point was to point out that Dems have put a laser like focus on government funded birth control and given it more attention than cancer drugs.” As for the word [libido], “never thought about every word parsed apart from the overall message, so not sure why that one word attracts such attention in the context of the statement. It adds color and as a communicator yourself, you probably try to write so as to create vivid pictures. Libido is a normal part of being human. Nothing scandalous about it. But without it, in either women or men, would there be a demand for birth control?”

Yeah. He’s just talking about how women can keep there own hoohas in check. They don’t need Uncle Sugar to step in with birth control access!

What Huckabee doesn’t seem to understand is by telling women they can keep their libido under control as a means of birth control is EXACTLY the same as telling them to keep their slutty legs shut and they’ve got nothing to worry about. That’s his birth control method? Women not having sex? Moreover, that the Dems are insulting women by implying women will be having recreational, as opposed to procreative, sex?

Nonsense! The women Huckabee knows are perfectly capable of saying “no” to sex.

How to break it to him that there is a possibility women he knows aren’t focused on sex is because the men they are hanging around are … like him? God knows I don’t want to have sex with a misogynistic dweeb who would judge me (but not himself) for it. I’m pretty certain the Land of O would not be a place I would visit under those circumstances.

Huckabee needs to understand that we all know women are capable of not having consensual sex. We get that. The problem is that women want the freedom to do as they damn well please with their bodies, and if that includes doing the what-what then by Gum they want the health care insurance providers to cough up the medication that keeps sex from being a baby-making event. A woman clamping her knees around some aspirin just doesn’t cut it.

Does Huckabee not understand that a lot, probably most, of the women having sex are doing so with their husbands and/or long-term partners? Sex is a fairly important part of romantic pair bonding. Sweet Babou and I aren’t having more kids (still a little sad about that, really) but we continue to make the beast with two backs. We do it because we are attracted to one another and orgasms feel good. Does Huckabee know women have those too?

Moreover, insurance companies provide Viagra. They provided Sweet Babou’s vasectomy without so much as a co-pay. Is it insulting to men, that the insurance companies don’t think guys cannot control their libido? If they could control their libido, men wouldn’t need Viagra and/or a vasectomy, now would they?

It also begs the question: Why is Uncle Sugar having to step in to make the insurers provided birth control to women in the first place? Why do insures consider it “normal” and “medically important” for guys to keep boning even after the bone is a boneless but women are totally okay without sex? Could it be the rank misogyny that insists women are more lovey-dovey and less sexual than men? That women are de facto the gate keepers of morality and it is up to US to keep men’s sex drives in check for them?

Of course, like all mansplainers, Huckabee feels picked on by the fact women, and the liberal men he considers to be women too, didn’t immediately grasp his wisdom; that we talked back and mocked him. ““I'm always flattered when people on the far left manufacture a new version of being ‘offended,’” Huckabee told me. “They can be quite creative in finding something that hurts their feelings.”

See? It’s not that he said something sexist and stupid! It’s that we are too sensitive!

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